How will it change you fear?

I don't work at stripe, but in general after a big layoff there's still the same amount of work to be done but now you have less people to do it. It's not just the people that were laid off that are gone, but others will leave after the layoff occurs fearing more layoffs to come. Leading to even less people to do the work. It can become a downward spiral for those who are left.

it's fine

I'm sure that most of stripe work reasonable hours

From what I heard from various sources, you probably meant to put a /s at the end

At that point you really want to quit. At least until it gets to the point where the company is trying hard to keep employees That’s when they start handling out raises again

When I was hired about a year ago, there was already not enough work to be done on my team. We were already consistently going into the "tech debt backlog" just to keep everybody saturated with work -- and even then had to do a "we'll just reserve some capacity for you for things that come up later in the sprint" (things never came up.)

And even at that point, my team doubled in size over the next few months with no increase in work. Stripe over-hired badly. Very badly. I also wish I got laid off today. The 14 weeks severance would have been a godsend for me.

yeah it's hard for me to wrap my head around this. I'm very well paid and have a lot of money in the bank but grew up poor so the moment i'm unemployed all i can think of is the wolves will be at the door any minute. A break or like the sabbaticals people take because of "burn out" seem like an unacceptable risk to livelihood. Again, i think it just comes from growing up poor but if i'm not working i get really really scared that i'm two steps away from living in a shelter no matter how much is in savings/investments.

I don't intend to come across as trite, but based on my reading of this comment I'm sure you'll find another satisfactory job soon. Relax and enjoy the time to reflect.

If possible, live below your means and set some money aside. It does a lot to diminish that fear.